2007 SFX Reviews

• Andrew M Butler, ed: An Unofficial Companion to the Novels of Terry Pratchett (SFX 166, February 2008)
• Sheri S. Tepper: The Margarets (SFX 167, March 2008)

Andrew M Butler, ed: An Unofficial Companion to the Novels of Terry Pratchett

(Publisher: Greenwood World Publishing * £25.00/£13.99 * 472pp * ISBN: 978-1-846450-01-3 hb, 978-1-846450-43-3 pb)

But there's no entry for Oook ...

Not so much a companion as a small illustrated encyclopedia, this reference book anatomises Terry Pratchett's works (not only novels, despite what the title says) and their spinoffs in over 250 essays -- some long, some short. Butler, who was a co-editor of Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature, classifies his entries under 21 headings from Adaptations, Bromeliad and Characters to Species, Themes and White Knowledge.

That last one is a neat phrase for "what everybody knows", the way 1066 And All That (whose authors get an entry) is "all the history you can remember." Discworld versions of Ancient Egypt, Australia and China/Japan are manic remixes of all our muddled folklore about those places. Besides obligatory essays on the books, characters or locations, Butler and his contributors cast a wide net to probe Pratchett's sources, influences and esoteric allusions. Thus there are entries for Cats, Gormenghast, Libraries, Trousers of Time, Widdershins and much more.

Though more scholarly than The Discworld Companion, the Unofficial Companion is easy reading and crammed with interesting nuggets. Not just for completists but for anyone who's tempted to ponder what makes Terry Pratchett tick.

Things We Learned, from the Elephants entry: "The name 'elephant' refers to a large, herbivorous pachyderm mammal, with a long proboscis and large ears." Mr Butler is full of these little surprises.

Sheri S. Tepper: The Margarets

(Publisher: Gollancz * £18.99 * 508pp * ISBN: 978-0-575-08047-8 * Also available in trade paperback, £12.99)

How many roads must a girl walk down?

Sheri S Tepper has the knack of telling fairy stories with an ambitious SF background. Not corny "Puss in Boots on Mars" reworkings -- though there's a race of intelligent and sympathetic cats here -- but new moral fables with the mythic ring of very old ones.

Her plot has deep roots, beginning in Earth's prehistory when some hapless primitives offend an insanely touchy bunch of alien visitors. Revenge is taken, leaving our whole race mentally damaged. We're somehow unable to stop fouling the nest and ruining every world we live on. By the late 21st century, even our best galactic friends are planning extreme measures. For our own good.

Margaret is a human girl whose life mysteriously splits along many paths. Alternate Margarets become a wife, queen, male warrior, healer, linguist, spy, shaman ... all the roles she imagined for herself when little. Some of these lives are gruelling, especially when touched by the weird, unpleasant parasites created as an anti-human extinction weapon by enemies who -- not content with messing us up in the first place -- have nursed their grudge for over 50,000 years.

The various Margaret histories are shaped by gods, of a kind, as part of an age-old plan to fulfil the prophecy hidden in a folktale. This features one person's impossible task of walking seven roads at once. For roads, read galactic wormhole portals linking seven worlds where the seven Margarets have ended up. Not easy, but just barely possible ...

Tepper is an artful storyteller who makes you believe in technologies very close indeed to magic. Amid gruesome flashes of imagination, she has a heartfelt environmental message but is too old and wise (next year she'll be eighty) to lapse into preachiness. Her resonant future fables linger in the memory.

Tepper didn't start publishing novels until her mid-50s, with the quirky "True Game" science-fantasies that opened with King's Blood Four (1983) and gathered a cult following.